Human Security and the Rise of Private Armies

In parts of the developing world, private armed groups are acquiring sufficient capabilities to challenge the state as the sole legitimate fount of order and stability. As a result, there is emerging a notion of clientele politics in which the loyalty of citizens, rooted as it is in the need for protection, is devolving to sub-state actors with highly questionable motives. The result is a malignant dynamic in which the erosion of the state both stems (in part) from the rise of these private actors and reinforces it as well. In their quest for security, citizens are paradoxically drawn to the very groups that have undermined the social order-flawed though it may have been-and compromised individual security. The cases of Sierra Leone and Colombia are presented here in support of this contention; and while their experiences are certainly idiosyncratic, the broad conclusions they occasion hold true for countless other private armed groups challenging the state elsewhere in the world.     

Diversifying Nature Protection: Evaluating the Changing Tools for Forest Protection in Canada and Norway

Governments increasingly struggle to protect representative nature types and ecological diversity within their territories only via the instrument of publicly designated protected areas. This article examines the rise of voluntary conservation and certification (i.e., private conservation) as tools for forest protection in Norway and Canada. We contrast the differing potential of these private conservation tools with protection through government legislation and regulation using four evaluative criteria: the representativeness of protected areas, the strength of protection, the longevity of protection, and the information generated through protection. We find that private conservation tools can match the strength of legal protection and help to dispel conflict, but that private tools create protection that is more likely to be reversed in the future. However, we also show that voluntary private conservation can become public protection, which highlights the importance of examining different paths toward secure and long‐lasting protection.     

The Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003 (QLD): A form of private governance in action?

The Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003 (QLD) (ACHA) removes the Queensland Government from any direct role in the regulation of Aboriginal cultural heritage, and operates by encouraging and in certain circumstances, requiring agreements between developers and Aboriginal groups. This paper argues that these agreements constitute a form of private governance. Agreements between developers and Aboriginal groups have traditionally been seen as falling outside private governance literature as they are domestic and contractual in nature. However, private governance theory has recently been used to understand agreements between developers and Indigenous groups in Canada and this paper will demonstrate that the approach of the ACHA constitutes a form of private governance. This paper will analyse the ACHA against key principles for good governance and explore the challenges for the protection of Aboriginal cultural heritage when the state is removed as regulator.     

Behavioral symmetry,rent seeking,and the Republic of Science

The Olsonian distinction between roving and stationary bandits outlines the rationale behind the transition from anarchy to the emergence of the predatory state. This two-bandit model may, however, be expanded to include more bandit types. In the case of Viking Age England, local English kings were unable to monopolize violence and defend their realms against competing Viking raiders. As the Vikings’ time horizon grew, so did the accumulated value of more formal taxation, and bandit types evolved in four steps. The first step is the Olsonian roving bandit, who executed Viking hit-and-run attacks and plunders during the second half of the tenth century. The second step is the gafol bandit; gafol is payment for leaving, paid to, among others, Swein Forkbeard. The third step is the heregeld bandit; heregeld is a tax to support an army for hire; most notably Thorkell the Tall’s. The fourth step is the Olsonian stationary bandit, i.e. the strongest military leader among the Vikings, Cnut the Great, settled down as the new king. Overall, the Olsonian two-bandit model can be expanded to a four-bandit staircase model, in which the new gafol and heregeld bandit types explain the steps from anarchy and short-run raiding to long-run formal taxation in a predatory state.

     

Varieties of Social Policy by Other Means: Lessons for Comparative Welfare State Research

Abstract

Scholars can take a broader look at social policy and understand that traditional public welfare state programs are only one of the many potential sources of social protection and regulation. The contributions of this special issue invite social policy scholars to explore policy instruments that provide “social policy by other means” across a wide array of areas, including agriculture, energy, immigration, taxation, and legal regulation of private benefits and services. The article provides a concise overview of some of the key theoretical and empirical implications of social policy by other means for comparative welfare state research. In order to do this, it is divided into two main sections, which respectively discuss the nature and boundaries of social policy and the varieties of social policy by other means. This is followed by a short conclusion, which summarizes the key lessons of this special issue for comparative welfare state research.     

Tackling unemployment in China: state capacity and governance issues

Abstract

This paper considers China's state capacity and changing governance as revealed through its policies to tackle unemployment. Despite high levels of growth, economic restructuring has resulted in rising unemployment over the last decade. The Chinese state has been able to manage job losses from state enterprises, demonstrating some state capacity in relation to this sector and some persistent command economy governance mechanisms. However both design and implementation of policies to compensate and assist particular groups among the unemployed have been shaped by weak state capacity in several other areas. First, capacity to gather accurate employment data is limited, meaning local and central governments do not have a good understanding of the extent and nature of unemployment. Second, the sustainability of supposedly mandatory unemployment insurance schemes is threatened by poor capacity to enforce participation. Third, poor central state capacity to ensure local governments implement policies effectively leads to poor unemployment insurance fund capacity, resulting in provision for only a narrow segment of the unemployed and low quality employment services. Although the adoption of unemployment insurance (and its extension to employers and employees in the private sector), the introduction of a Labour Contract Law in 2007, and the delivery of employment services by private businesses indicate a shift towards the use of new governance mechanisms based on entitlement, contract and private sector delivery of public-sector goods, that shift is undermined by poor state capacity in relation to some of these new mechanisms.     

The Impact of Political Connections on Donations to Chinese NGOs

ABSTRACT

In this study, we explore the returns to political connections in non-corporate contexts within China, a country transitioning from a planned to market economy. Using China as an empirical case study, we investigate two separate, but related, hypotheses on the financial benefits of political connections for a sample of 1,435 Chinese foundations from 2005–2011. This extends Western donation determinants literature to a Chinese context and political guanxi (social relationships where individuals or organizations exchange future favors or gifts) research to non-corporate contexts. Our empirical results show that there is no relationship between the presence of state employees on an NGO's staff (a measure of political guanxi) and private donations. However, there is a small but positive relationship between the amount of government funding an NGO receives (a signal of legitimacy) and private donations. These findings suggest that, in post-communist countries such as China, donors may not be seeking future favors from their contributions and instead are interested in developing a robust civil society with legitimate, high-quality NGOs. Additionally, the similarity between Western donation determinants research findings and Chinese donation determinants, in this article, requires future comparative studies of both how and why donors make decisions.     

A Review of: “Exploring Positive Identities and Organizations: Building a Theoretical and Research Foundation edited by Laura Morgan Roberts and Jane E. Dutton”

ABSTRACT

Public service motivation (PSM) has been shown to be positively related to job satisfaction in the public sector, but there are two gaps in the literature. First, not only PSM but also pro-social motivation directed towards helping specific others (called user orientation) may affect job satisfaction. Second, the relationship between job satisfaction and these two types of pro-social motivation, PSM and user orientation, may also be found in the private sector. This study tests whether job satisfaction is associated with PSM and user orientation, and whether these associations differ between public and private employees. Using data from a survey of Danish employees (n = 2,811), we generally find positive relationships between the two types of pro-social motivation and job satisfaction, but the strength of the associations vary between occupations. The PSM–job satisfaction association does not differ significantly between the private and public sector, while the user orientation–job satisfaction association is strongest for private employees. This suggests that to understand the relationships between pro-social motivation, employment sector, and job satisfaction, future studies could fruitfully consider incorporating other types of pro-social motivation such as user orientation.     

The Transformation of organic regulation: The ambiguous effects of publicization

The regulatory regime for organic products is different from other non‐state‐market driven (NSMD) regimes because it is the only one that evolved from a purely private into a regime where the establishment of minimum standards has become the monopoly of public powers. This article is the first to study the effects of the process of publicization, a term coined to characterize the transformation of private into public standards. The central hypothesis studied is that the process of publicization has empowerment and containment effects at the same time. To test the hypothesis the article analyses the effects of publicization on regulatory capabilities of private regulators as well as on the quality of the standards. The effects of publicization are further explored by comparing the legal and institutional architecture that shapes the coexistence of private and public regimes in the EU and the US, showing important differences between the two systems. The article offers a new perspective to look at the dynamic interaction between private and public regulation and its findings are of general relevance for the debate on the desirability of governmental intervention on private regulatory schemes.     

Citizenship—the real democratic deficit of the European union? 1

Given the pressures of globalisation, the nation state is limited in its control over public policy agendas, particularly in the field of social policy. The response of domestic governments to the heat of international competition has been to create more flexible, post‐welfare state economies. A significant consequence of this development is the removal of social rights and the acceleration of social exclusion. This gap which has opened up could be filled by the European Union, but it has so far failed to take a leading role in this regard.

So, as European citizens we should be concerned that the forces which operate to balance the harsher effects of the free market have been lost at the European, supranational level. There are three central reasons why this is the case: (1) the European Union consists of 15 member states with competing, historically rooted understandings of social protection and, therefore, social rights; (2) defining social rights is traditionally a state‐derived function and as such, the absence of an EU state means the absence of comprehensive citizen protection; (3) these two factors are magnified by the relative weakness of the supranational institutions and democratic deficit between the key EU institutions (weak vis‐à‐vis member state governments and with regard to the supremacy of the market).

The combination of these problems has meant that the European Union has not taken the primary role in providing the kind of social protection that we used to enjoy in the domestic context. The result of this is a situation in which the market is determining both the level and even the kind of rights that we are entitled to, thus we are citizens of a European market and not of a European state.

As a state‐derived function, and without a European state, social and citizen rights are being neglected. As a consequence, unless citizen protection is developed through an intergovernmental or supranational framework, it is difficult to see how governments can honour their responsibility to safeguard their people.     

Covering the private parts: the (re-)nationalisation of housing finance

Abstract

Is state power or control over financial markets really withering? Most narratives/analyses of financialisation see a growing penetration of private capital into everyday life that runs parallel to the increasing power of private financial capital over state policy. Yet housing finance – mortgages – sits at the centre of banking, and banking sits at the centre of the financial system. Large-scale mortgage markets only function where the state wraps around the banking system to remove maturity risks and to limit excessive credit creation. Partial deregulation in the 1990s and 2000s created a crisis that states resolved by re-nationalising much of mortgage finance. This renewed and overwhelming state presence suggests that financialisation is a state-driven story, and that private financial power, stability and instruments require state support above and beyond contract enforcement and prudential regulation.     

On representation(s): art,violence and the political imaginary of South Africa

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to explore the multiple layers of representation which occur in the South Africa Pavilion at the Art Biennale in Venice in order to understand how they constitute and affect the state’s political imaginary. By analysing three artworks (David Koloane’s The Journey, Sue Williamson’s For thirty years next to his heart, and Zanele Muholi’s Faces and Phases) which were exhibited in the 2013 Pavilion, two key arguments emerge: 1) in this context artistic representation can be understood as a form of political representation; and, 2) these artists are simultaneously state and citizenry representatives. A tension emerges between the political imaginary desired by the South African state and the political imaginary enacted by its representatives. The article draws on seven months of participant observation fieldwork at the Biennale, which involved 76 interviews with people associated with the South Africa Pavilion, including government representatives, exhibition organisers, artists, and visitors. Part I explores the concept of representation in order to establish the two philosophical trajectories (political and artistic) with which this article engages – with particular reference to Michael Saward’s framework of the representative claim. Part II explores the multiple representative claims which the three artists and their artworks enact.

Abbreviations: Biennale: Venice Art Biennale; DAC: Department of Arts and Culture; For thirty years: For thirty years next to his heart, by Sue Williamson; TRC: Truth and Reconciliation Commission; US: United States of America     

Insuring legislative wealth transfers: theory and evidence

Authorities rely on reports from private citizens to detect and enforce more than a trivial portion of effective law-breaking. The present article is the first to study the cultural aspect of peer reporting experimentally. By collecting data in a post-Soviet country (Moldova), we focus in particular on how the Soviet legacy of using citizens as private informants may have a long-lasting effect on their willingness to cooperate with state authorities. We then contrast those effects with peer reporting behavior in France, a Western society. Our results suggest that participants in Moldova view cooperation with authorities as less socially acceptable than their counterparts in France. Our results also suggest that participants in Moldova engage less frequently in peer reporting than individuals in France. However, we also find that less peer reporting does not necessarily imply less tax compliance. Participants in both countries exhibit very similar tax compliance rates. We explain the effect of peer reporting on tax compliance in Moldova using the country's past experience during the Soviet era, when being reported to authorities was common and carried grave consequences.

     

How can we better align private security with the public interest? Towards a civilizing model of regulation

How can we better align private security with the public interest? This question has met with two answers in the literature on private security regulation, one seeking to cleanse the market of deviant sellers, the other to communalize the market through the empowerment of buyers. Both models of regulation are premised upon a limited neoclassical economic conception of how market transactions map onto the public interest. This article makes the case for a new model of regulation, one that seeks to civilize the market. Drawing upon the insights of economic sociology, our model regards the market for security as a moral economy in which commodity and non‐commodity values jostle and collide. On this basis, we propose a regulatory architecture where buyers and sellers are cast not only as economic actors but also as moral actors, revealing new avenues through which to encompass private security within the democratic promise of security.     

Grounding transnational business governance: A political-strategic perspective on government responses in the Global South

Recent scholarship on transnational business governance has begun to examine public-private interactions and the active role of governments. We make two key contributions that integrate and expand this literature. First, in juxtaposition to functionalist accounts, we foreground the fundamentally political and often contentious character of these interactions. As private transnational governance schemes and standards “hit the ground,” private-public interactions, we argue, are embedded in national political arenas and tied to domestic distributional struggles among competing regulatory coalitions. Building upon multiple empirical streams of research, we develop a political-strategic framework that maps the diversity of Southern government responses (substitute, adopt, repurpose, replace, or reject) to transnational private governance. Our framework shows that government responses are a function of both strategic fit with domestic industrial capabilities and structures, and strength of developmental state capacity. Second, our proposed framework adopts the vantage point of Global South governments and industries, particularly how development challenges and strategic options within global value chains affect their understanding of, and responses to, transnational schemes and standards. This is an important corrective to a Northern bias in the private governance literature.     

Do Partners in PPPs view Public and Private Management Differently?

Differences between public and private management have been studied extensively by comparing sectors, but not within cross‐sectoral collaborative arrangements. As participants in such arrangements have actually experienced both management styles, examining their perceptions of how these styles differ may contribute innovatively to existing literature. This paper compares such perceptions between public and private sector project members (N = 63) involved in four PPPs in the Netherlands. We assess (1) to what extent and under which conditions these project members view public and private management differently and (2) how they evaluate these differences. By triangulating quantitative and qualitative interview data, we examine Boyne's classical hypotheses and find that more than two‐thirds of the statements making reference to these hypotheses offer support for them; more so, the vast majority of such statements evaluate sectoral differences negatively. Intriguingly, type of PPP is a stronger determinant of perceived differences than the manager's sector of origin.     

Brunei's strategic dilemmas

Abstract

This paper compares health policy trends in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand with the purpose of drawing usable lessons in reform. The study finds that governments in the region are rapidly privatizing the provision of healthcare at the same time as they are expanding the government's role in financing. The paper argues that expansion of public financing at the same time as private provision is misconceived as the combination would aggravate instances and severity of market failures peculiar to the sector. The dysfunctional trend is particularly evident in Indonesia and the Philippines. In Thailand, in contrast, the expansion of public financing has occurred in the context of a health system dominated by public providers, which has had the effect of restraining healthcare costs. Malaysia occupies a mid position between Indonesia and the Philippines on the one hand and Thailand on the other. All four cases underline the value of state capacity in designing optimal policies and implementing them effectively.     

‘Appointment with history’: The referenda on the Stormont peace agreement,May 1998

The Emergence of Democracy, By Tatu Vanhanen. Helsinki: The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, 1984. Pp. 168. N.P.

Contemporary Democracies. By G. Bingham Powell, Jr. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1982. Pp. xi + 279. £7 (paperback).

Democracy, East and West. By Howard P. Kainz. London: Macmillan, 1984. Pp. 152. £20.

Electoral Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies: Realignment or Dealignment? Edited by Russell J. Dalton, Scott C. Flanagan and Paul Allen Beck. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Pp.xvi + 513. £59.20 (hardback), £12.60 (paperback).

The Place of Ideology in Political Life. By D.J. Manning and T.J. Robinson. London: Croom and Helm, 1985. Pp. 128. £17.95 (hardback).

Against Socialist Illusion: A Radical Argument. By David Selbourne. London: Macmillan, 1985. Pp. vii + 327. £25 (hardback), £8.95 (paperback).

Socialism, The State and Public Policy in France. Edited by Philip G. Cerny and Martin A. Schain. London: Frances Pinter, 1985. Pp. vi + 298. £17.50 (hardback).

Wohlfahrtsstaatliche Politik unter bürgerlichen und sozialdemokratischen Regierungen: ein internationaler Vergleich. By Manfred G. Schmidt. Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag, 1982. Pp. 258. DM 45.00 (paperback).

Vom Armenhaus zum Wohlfahrtsstaat: Analysen zur Entwicklungder Sozialversiche‐rungin Westeuropa. By Jens Alber. Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag, 1982. Pp. 280. DM 45.00 (paperback).

Western Europe and Japan Between the Superpowers. By Wolf Mendl. London: Croom Helm 1984. Pp. 181. £15.95.

Economic Summits and Western Decision‐making. Edited by Cesare Merlini. London: Croom Helm, in association with EIPA, 1984. Pp. 212. £15.95.

From Dictatorship to Democracy. Coping with the Legacies of Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism. Edited by John H. Herz. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1982. Pp. xii + 311.

Die Neue Freiheit: 1945–1961. By Erich Mende. Munich and Berlin: Herbig, 1984. Pp. 491. DM 44.

West German Lay Judges: Recruitment and Representativeness. By John P. Richert. Tampa: University Presses of Florida, 1983. Pp. ix + 223. $19.00 (hardback).

The Politics of Public Enterprise: Oil and the French State. By Harvey B. Feigenbaum. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Pp. 194. £26.90 (hardback) £7.40 (paperback).

The View From Inside: A French Communist Cell in Crisis. By JANE Jenson and George Ross. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. x + 346 (no index or bibliography). £29.95 (hardback).

Industrial Policy and the Motor Industry. By Stephen Wilks. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984. Pp. xviii + 318. £18.95.

L'état britannique. By CLAUDE Journes. Paris: Publisud, 1985. Pp. 267. N.P.

No Pope of Rome: Militant Protestantism in Modem Scotland. By Steve Bruce. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing Co., 1985. Pp. 270. £12.95 (hardback).

Socialism and Abundance. Radical Socialism in the Danish Welfare State. By John Logue. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983. Pp. XX11 + 353. $35.     

Appendix I: Glossary

All the First Minister's Men: The Truth Behind Holyrood. By D. Black. Edinburgh: Birlinn 2001. Pp.237, £7.99. ISBN 1841581674.

New Scotland, New Politics. By A. Brown, J. Curtice and L. Paterson. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2001. Pp.206, £14.99 ISBN 1902930258.

The Scottish Electorate. By A. Brown and D. McCrone. Basingstoke: Macmillan 1999. Pp.200, £17.99 (paper) ISBN 0333725263; £47.50 (cloth) ISBN 0333725255.

Politics and Society in Scotland. By A. Brown, A.D. McCrone and L. Paterson. Basingstoke: Macmillan 1998. Pp.288, £15.50, ISBN 0333747089.

The Scottish Nation, 1700–2000. By T. Devine. London: Allen Lane 1999. Pp.720, £9.99, ISBN 0140230041.

Scotland's Shame? Bigotry and Sectarianism in Modern Scotland. Edited by T. Devine. Edinburgh: Mainstream 2000. Pp.240, £9.99, ISBN 1840183306.

The Road to Home Rule: Images of Scotland's Cause. By C. Harvie and P. Jones. Edinburgh: Polygon 2000. Pp.224, £11.99 ISBN 190293010X.

Claiming Scotland: National Identity and Liberal Culture. By J. Hearn. Edinburgh: Polygon 2000. Pp.233, £16.99, ISBN 1902930169.

Scottish Politics in the Twentieth Century. By I.G.C. Hutchison. Basingstoke: Palgrave 2001. Pp.208, £14.50 (paper) ISBN 0333588754; £45 (cloth) ISBN 0333588746.

Scottish Government and Politics. By P. Lynch. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2001. Pp.248, £14.95, ISBN 0748612874.

After Britain: New Labour and the Return of Scotland. By T. Nairn. London: Granta 2000. Pp.336, £8.99, ISBN 1862073228.

Crisis in the Classroom. By L. Paterson. Edinburgh: Mainstream 2000. Pp.192, £7.99, ISBN 1840184205.

Scotland Reclaimed: The Inside Story of Scotland's First Democratic Parliamentary Elections. By M. Richie. Edinburgh: Saltire Society 2000. Pp.224, £10.99, ISBN 0854110771.

An Important Matter of Principle. By D. Seawright. Dartmouth: Ashgate 1999. Pp.236, £47.50, ISBN 1840140666.

Imagine: A Socialist Vision for the 21st Century By T. Sheridan and A. McCombes. Edinburgh: Rebel Inc. 2000. Pp.272, £7.99, ISBN 1841950564.

Open Scotland? Journalists, Spin Doctors and Lobbyists. By P. Schlesinger. Edinburgh: Polygon 2001. Pp.318, £15.99, ISBN 1902930282.

The Scottish Parliament. By B. Taylor. Edinburgh: Polygon 1999. Pp.266, £12.99, ISBN 1902930126.

Year Zero: An Inside View of the Scottish Parliament. By M. Watson. Edinburgh: Polygon 2001. Pp.221, £12.99, ISBN 1902930266.

Scotland: The Challenge of Devolution. Edited by A. Wright. Dartmouth: Ashgate 2000. Pp.282, £42.50, ISBN 0754612546.     

Production,circulation and value

The Marxian transformation problem is usually thought of as bridging the transition from 'essence' (value) to 'phenomena' or surface (prices). This paper shows that such a conception is incorrect. The transformation is actually between two theoretical levels of the construction of the economic region of the capitalist mode of production. The first of these levels is production in itself (Capital,Volume I), while the second is the complex unity of production and circulation (Capital,Volume III). This theoretical construction is complicated for two reasons: (1) despite the fact that production is the dominant instance, the social relationships of commodity production appear only in circulation; (2) circulation categories appear implicitlyeven at the level of production in itself.

These considerations establish the transformation problem at the heart of a correct conception of the capitalist mode of production. Thus the sharpest distinctions between neo-Ricardianism, vulgar Marxism and Marxism can be drawn here. In particular, it is shown that a correct appreciation of the transformation problem proves the inadequacy of an instrumentalist conception of the state since, at least in this area, bourgeois class interest arises only at the level of class and is not the sum of individual interests (even over a subgroup of the class).

Finally, the transformation problem itself is reviewed in detail. Mathematical results are separated from the essentials of the problem which are shown to lie in the correct choice of normalization, a choice that insures the transformation will actually be from value to modified value and not from value to price.